Large Letters

“ Ye see how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand… From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. ”

When does a blessing become a curse? How can something so right in one season of life later be altogether wrong? Are we better people now than were the people who lived before Christ?

When we were newborns, our mothers put diapers on us for obvious reasons. But there came a time when the diapers had to come off and we had to take care of our own toilet time. To go back to diapers would mean something was wrong with us. So it was with the bottle, and with those whirled fruits and vegetables: our baby food. As we grow up, we grow out of childish things. If we don't grow out of the need of baby things, we're stuck and that's bad. What is a blessing at a young age can become a curse when we need to grow beyond it.

Youngsters have pastimes they too need to outgrow if they are to become adult men and women. Life is like that. We grow and we outgrow our clothing, toys, interests and need for certain rules. As adults, we can determine when to go to bed and don't have to be told. We get ourselves up in the morning. We dress and clean ourselves and go about our daily work as we must. To return to childhood would be slavery to an adult.

So it was with the Law of Moses. The Law was imposed in order to train up a new people in the will of God. Some of the Law was given to show the way to God's heart through moral absolutes. The Ten Commandments express these morals, as do the Laws of Love: to love God with all our being, and to love our neighbor even as we do ourselves . The moral law is right for all men at all times and we have never grown past the need to observe it.

Other laws were imposed for the Children of Abraham that set them apart from the world. Circumcision was the sign that made them distinct and gave newborn boys their rights in Israel. Other rituals, feasts, fasts, Sabbath regulations and acts of worship were to guide the Jews toward God through religious life. Their religious code and civil laws were intertwined as a man could be executed for blasphemy against God as well as for sleeping with his neighbor's wife. These religious and civil laws would make the Jews distinct from Gentiles, and when the highest of these revelations came to pass—the coming of the Anointed One—they were to be transmuted into a new Covenant, where God no longer wrote such laws on tablets of stone, but would live in man's heart and give His rulings from inside a converted nature.

Mankind was growing up: slowly, laboriously, with many setbacks, but finally arriving at a place when Messiah did indeed come. Most of Israel rejected Him, and mankind killed Him, but His mission succeeded anyway. Through His Apostles, Christ's grace was to go to the world. Judaism had grown up in Jesus. The religious and civil Law of Moses would no longer mark the boundaries of God's favor.

“See how large a letter I have written unto you with mine own hand.” St. Paul wrote his church in Galatia, a region of today's central Turkey, with a letter of passion and rebuke. Paul was the Apostle to the Gentile world and God was using him to batter down the walls that had held the light in Judaism back from the rest of the world. That light was always meant to go to the world, but fear of pagans had turned the Jews inward. Now that light was coming, and Paul had already been granted freedom from the Apostolic council to dispense the Gentiles from Circumcision and all its attending Jewish religious observances.

But an early heresy called the Judaisers sought to bring new Christians into full Jewish life before they were deemed really Christians. This alienated many potential believers, because Gentiles rightly felt it unnecessary to become a Jew first. Coming under a Law that was done away in Christ's death and resurrection was turning that former blessing into a curse. The Law was a schoolmaster for Israel, but would become a prison warden for Gentiles, and Paul knew it. “ As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised… that they may glory in your flesh. But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ… For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.” Galatians 6:12-15

Paul didn't want this letter to miscarry, or be thought a counterfeit. So he ended the work of his scribe by scrawling the last lines in his own hand, the large letters of a man who was partially blinded due to stonings and tortures he'd endured. His poor eyesight was a badge of his courage and love for the church, so they would recognize these large letters.

St. Paul's point in writing the Galatians was to stop this proud and dangerous returning of new Christians to a Judaism that was no longer meant for mankind. It had served its purpose; it had brought many to Jehovah through its sacrifices and codes. But the new light had shined, and God was making peace with all mankind. This was too important to return to things dispensed with. A new Spirit was available by faith, not by Law. The faith that gave Abraham favor with God was not through Mosaic Law, a law that only blessed the fully obedient, and cursed all others. No one had fully obeyed but Jesus Christ, and He had set aside the specifically Jewish Law in favor of faith in Himself. Now mankind was free to love God and be loved. Paul's passion to get that good news to the Gentiles was not to be subverted by the Judaisers, turning his church from freedom back to slavery.

There are passages in life, as in history, when something that was good for the times later became a new evil. Feudalism gave way to nationalism; monarchy gave way to constitutional republics. Slavery, once a viable economic social contract, rightly was abolished. Freedom is always the goal, but a freedom empowered by people who have grown up in righteousness and truth . Only the godly can self-govern for long. But self-government is always better than tyranny.

Sin enslaves us. Jesus taught: “ Truly, I say, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.” John 8:34 This was true for Jews and Greeks (or Gentiles). St. Paul wrote the Romans: “What then? Are we better than [the Jews]? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; as it is written, There is none righteous, not even one; There is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God; All have turned aside… There is none who does good, not even one.” Romans 3:9-12 So if the Law couldn't keep anyone from sinning against God, there had to be a new way to freedom from this slavery. “Do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts,” Paul continues. “And do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.” Romans 6:12-14 “Now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.” Romans 6:22

Jesus said: “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” Matthew 5:17 He obeyed the Law, but in doing so, set aside its requirements on a new people who were grown beyond its teachings. This people had the God they worshiped actually dwelling within them, leading them to better living. They didn't become lawless by being led by the Spirit, but became better than the law-abiding Jews. The Law said, “give a tithe of all you receive.” The Law of the Spirit often led believers to give everything away, like St. Francis. The Law said, “work for yourselves six days, and give the seventh to God.” The Law of the Spirit led believers to give every day to God. This was not anarchy, but better obedience. The Law said, “don't murder.” The Spirit said, “don't even hate or bear grudges.”

In Christ a new Law has come, the Law of a liberated soul, now free to love as God has created us to love. This law of love supercedes, and explains and empowers all the Law that preceded it. Such love wasn't possible until Jesus gave His ultimate gift of love for us. Now we are free to give our lives to Him. St. Paul's weakened eyes gave witness to his own sacrifice: “for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” He served his Master well, and wouldn't turn back to any older one. Jesus had said you can't serve two masters. Paul would serve only One, and would have his churches do the same.

Are we better people now than were the people who lived before Christ? It's hard to know that, but we have so much more given to us in the way of available knowledge of God, freedom to follow Him without the reprisals of a governmental system. Today new Christian churches rise in the shadow of minarets calling whole nations to worship Allah. The Christians can be arrested and brutally tortured for turning to Christ, and yet they find new freedom in the grace of God who loves them. Do we use our freedom to love God in a worthy manner too? God knows. The people who walked in times before the Cross still yearned for the Savior. May we yearn for Him all the more, now that we know Who He is, and have the grace and freedom to choose Him. Let us grow beyond those who went before, using the new grace for blessing this world with the gift of freedom and new life.

PFH+